Sony Ericsson and Nokia are the only handset manufacturers to offer a wide range of music-dedicated phones: the Walkman series and the XpressMusic series. Well, now the companies are also the only ones to have announced the upcoming availability of their own unlimited music downloads services.

After Nokia’s unveiling of Comes With Music, Sony Ericsson today announced “PlayNow plus” – a service that should bring us the ultimate mobile music experience, offering the freedom of downloadingan unlimited number of songs, over a mobile operator’s network.

PlayNow plus will allow users to browse and download millions of track on their phones, as well as on their PC, via a complimentary desktop player.

PlayNow plus will be first launched in Sweden, via Telenor, sometime later this year. The beginning of 2009 will bring PlayNow plus to other markets from around the world, but Sony Ericsson doesn’t mention which these markets are. The service is said to cost around 10 Euros per month.

The first handset to have PlayNow plus pre-installed on it will be a special edition of Sony Ericsson W902, named “Sony Ericsson W902 plus”. Apart from offering full access to the PlayNow plus service, the 5 MP Walkman phone will also come with 1,000 popular songs in MP3 format. More PlayNow plus-enabled phones will be released after the W902.

In addition to the introduction of PlayNow plus, Sony Ericsson has also announced that its PlayNow Arena portal will be available in five new Europea countries. So, besides Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, where PlayNow Arena is already accessible, by the end of 2008, the following countries will get the service too: UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.

Yes, this subscription service will work, unlike every other subscription service ever. And it'll be completely unlimited and DRM-free! Except for the limitations and, er, the DRM. I wrote a rant about it: http://tinyurl.com/4m2tjt

David Gerard

Yes, this subscription service will work, unlike every other subscription service ever. And it'll be completely unlimited and DRM-free! Except for the limitations and, er, the DRM. I wrote a rant about it: http://tinyurl.com/4m2tjt